Gazza

If you cant find the dimensions of a particular ride, then a rough way to get them is to find a theme park that has the ride you want, look it up on Google Earth, find the ride, and then use the ruler tool to measure the base of the ride.

It pays to check the website http://seaworld.myfun.com.au/Attractions/S...s-Unleashed.htm Just in time for the school holidays too!

What? They couldn't put a more interesting message? Corkscrew Rollercoaster will be closed 19 October - 30 November for an exciting upgrade and transformation into Sea Viper...New for summer 2009!

Tango Train does have a bumpy circular track, but as T-Rex said the cars don't spin. http://www.parkz.com.au/photo/AU/Sydney/Lu...ango_Train.html While we are on the topic, there are a couple more variants I know of... The Raupen Bahn...Similar to the Tango Train, but it has this bizzare fabric awning that folds over the whole train, so for part of the cycle you are out in the open, but for part you are closed in: http://www.flatrides.com/Ride%20Index%20Pa...raupenbahn.html The Old Train...Again, same ride, but there isn't a central motor, but rather motors between each car that drive it along the wavy track: http://www.parkz.com.au/parks/GB/Windsor/L...ino-Dipper.html Sea Storm....The cars can spin around, but not in an uncontrolled spin like on a Tilt-a-Whirl, rather the cars can just do a simple motorised 180 degree spin, to face either forwards or backwards: http://www.parkz.com.au/parks/GB/Chessingt...-Sea-Storm.html

Hmmm, so he has a choice between two of the same type of ride. So he can go and ride a coaster that is 'fun' for only half the ride, is known to be uncomfortable, is known to suck, and is known to get long queues. Or he can go to ride a coaster that is fun for all the ride, is known to be unrestrictive, is known to be quite a good ride, and is guaranteed to have a wait of a couple of trains or less. $69 is a lot to pay for the 'experience' of the one at DW.

They indeed cost less, and the lower capital and running costs are reflected in admission prices (Eg a one day ticket to one of the dry parks on the gold coast is $69, to one of the water parks is $45) To give an example, the Rip at WWW is quoted as costing $1.4 mil, and that is for quite a large slide. http://www.parkz.com.au/parks/AU/Gold_Coas...08-The-Rip.html By comparison, the Claw (A fairly run of the mill, moderatle sized flat ride) next door at Dreamworld cost 4 times as much ($6 Mil) Even a basic roller coaster will set you back around $10 mil these days. Water slides are cheap to construct because they have very few moving parts (Just the pump really), don't need expensive vehicles that run on tracks with saftey harnesses (Just simple mats or inflatable rings), typically aren't built as tall as roller coasters and the support structures don't have to be as heavy duty (Since they are only supporting the loads of a light fibreglass slide and an 80kg rider, rather than a heavy steel track and a train that weighs 20 tonnes exterting strong forces), and are constructed from a 'library' of pedesigned fibreglass parts that fit together to make a slide (By comparison coaster tracks for instance need to be custom fabricated for nearly every job) The cost effectiveness of water slides is one reason Jamberoo's expansion plans consists entirely water slides.

I think the long term plan is to establish a dry park eventually. The thing is that water parks/water slides cost considerably less to build than dry parks/mechanical rides. I can imagine that they would play it safe and get the water park running first and drawing visitors, and then branch out and establish a theme park next door. This means they can delay the big cash outlay until they have made some actual money. This is of course if this project gets off the ground. How about theming all of them? I thought the reason people prefer places like MW over DW is because they prefer the atmosphere of a themed environment. Plus at the end of the day 'themed' parks are more popular with the public than generic ones....I know I certainly preferred Disney, Universal, Busch, Alton etc over places like Six Flags, and if you look at worldwide attendance figures then 'themed' parks turn out to be the most popular.

I've visited in off peak, and it was running one train, and it was so quiet that I could get off the train, and 'catch' the same one as it entered the loading area. As for the number of times I have ridden it...Only nerds count the number of times they have ridden coasters

They did recently recieve approval to build a shot and drop tower... Can you give us more of a description of what these blue rails look like? Im not sure what you are describing...Individual rails like what they make train tracks from? Pairs of rails with cross bracing like roller coaster track, four rails with a lattice structure like the way Batwing at Movie World is constructed?

You sunk my battleship: http://videos.sudpresse.be/incident-a-la-r..._5144dce41.html

I think everyone here would agree that Superman beats Cyclone by a country mile...So if you loved Big Dipper/Cyclone then you'd love Superman Escape even more.

It depends on the type of thrill you are after too....Dreamworld has more thrilling 'flat' rides (Otherwise known as 'spin and spews'), But the roller coasters at Movie World are more thrilling than the ones at Dreamworld. When was the last time you were at either park?

But if one park decided to offer a more 'Disney' experience, then it might not need to discount.

No, but my initial point was that you said As if to say the only way to survive in the market was to be a no frills price beater ("if you find a cheaper advertised price elsewhere, we'll beat it by XX%") like Bunnings or whatever, and that is simply not true. Granted, premium products will have price cuts every now and then, but the over-riding business stratergy is still to focus on overall quality, and offer "something more to some", rather than the focus being on meeting a particular price point. The problem is that you are confusing the product being sold versus the setting it is being sold in, and that is why you keep using the example of price matching. Obviously if you after one particular thing then you will just go with whoever is cheapest, because the 'niceness' of a shop, or the personality of the employees counts for little if the outcome is no different (Eg when I got an iPod, I just got it from the cheapest place since the quality of the thing I took home would not vary store to store) But if you are talking about the quality of the product being sold, then it changes the situation entirely, because with most products you have producers that try to appeal to different market segments, and you'll always have higher end producers that don't normally discount because demand is driven not by price, but by quality....

Just for interests sake I decided to have a look at the cost of a SoCal residents annual pass with blackout dates for both Disney parks. The cost 194 USD (or 224 AUD) They also offer an unrestricted pass for non residents, and that is 429 USD (or 496 AUD) So to sum up the residents one is 45% of the cost of the 'premium' one. Dreamworld is offering theirs for $99. By comparison the 2 year platinum world pass is 267 for two years, or $133.50 a year. So to sum this one up, the discount one is 75% of the cost of the 'premium' one. And to conclude, Disney actually discount more deeply than Ardent Leisure. But I didn't stop there. Parques Reunidos offer a pass that gets you into Parque Warner Madrid, Bobbejaanland, Tussenfryd, Mirabilandia, Bonbonland, plus a few others for 87 EUR, or 146 EUR. Cedar Fair offer a pass for their 11 US dry parks and 6 water parks for 160 USD (185 AUD) which works out to something cheap like 11 AUD/park (By comparison, its still $33 a park with the WVTP Qld VIP passes) I could probably go and find more examples (One thing that struck me is that all the places seem to have a field to put in a zip code for local resident pricing...has this ever been historically offered here?) I guess the point is that we do have quite expensive theme park admission here (And the margins of the Ardent parks seem to reflect this), and furthermore annual passes seem to only ever have been marketed to diehards who really like the place and are willing to throw down 2.2 days worth of admission for the privilege, rather than something for 'everyone' as a general form of entertainment. Again, I think this is a case of something being a standard overseas for a while, but supposedly really shocking and unacceptable for the Australian market. Now granted, I think they should have held off on the Q150 pass until well after the peak, and let the momentum of the new attraction marketing (Where it existed) push things more, but still I think there is room for this sort pricing on a more permanent basis. What I'd really like to see is for them to stop doing ad-hock deals, and just set up a 'grid' of permanently availabe annual passes where you pick the number of parks you want and amount of benefits you want, and give them all proper names (To me it is an oxymoron to call it a 'VIP' pass when it has blackout dates) If you did this, then the opportunity for up selling arises. Advertise the $99 dealies on TV since they are simplest, but then when they get to the website it could be like "Hey if we pay $20 more we can get the gold version of the pass and get into Halloween...lets get that!" I think this post is long enough. Edit: I'll put this in for fun. But I was at Coomera last Wednesday....When none of your ticket booths are open at either park, and all admissions are being done through guest relations, you know you are doing badly.

Isn't that WWWs buisness model? Offering an inferior product at a higher price (Well, slightly higher)....It's no coincidence now the novelty factor of the place has worn off that the majority of their attendance is from world pass guests. That may be the case in the retail industry (Obviously what you are basing your example on), but if what you were saying was really true across the board then eating out would only be fast food places and there would be no market for fancy restaurants, we'd only stay at Hotel Formule 1s and not at resorts, luxury car brands would not have a place in the market, only cheap buzzboxes, in LA Six Flags would be the most popular park, not the higher quality Disney and Universal parks, there would only be budget airlines and not full service airlines etc etc.

Except themselves

But the thing that doesn't add up then is why juice isn't more expensive on the standalone menu, if it costs more?

I feel like ranting about WWW's food. I was there on Wednesday, got a grilled chicken burger meal. I got slugged an extra $1.50 for changing from a regular soft drink to a juice (Even though both things cost $3.70 on the individual menu)....why such a big price difference. Finally got my meal, the chicken pattie was literally half the size of the catburgers at MW (Really, i mean it, the fillet inside had a straight edge on one side, so obviously they take full sized ones, cut them and split them between burgers . To top it all off they must really be keen on using their vegetable resources efficiently, because I got the end slice of the tomato with the stem. At least the chips were fine. That cost me $16 all up.

I'd absolutely agree with Dj on this one, The whole point of a night event is that it is dark outside, but unfortunately for WPH&S reasons they have to light the place up, which defeats the purpose. The key is to find a balance between A ) Making sure people can see where they are going B ) Making sure the place is dark and creepy. Unfortunately, there tends to be too much paranoia around point A, which detracts from point B. Nobody is saying for WPH&S to take a step back in terms of security, rides running safely or anything like that, just in terms of how dark the park is.

Harrys isn't the only bar, they do have the outdoor one at Ricks Cafe...That whole middle eastern themed courtyard area could totally have some music and lights added for the nights, so its a sort of special themed bar that people could mill around in.

The 11pm closing time has certainly caught my attention, kind of a shame that a number of attractions are closing at 9pm, Though I'd like to think that this is because of local residents, and not an effort to cheap out.

To be fair, the UK parks do it too, and I ate at the Pizza Hut at Thorpe Park (Lol and took a photo of the experience) $15 all you can eat: Can I ask though, if the opening of this outlet causes instability within the parks, resulting in further spread of franchises within them, could you call this process the Domino theory?

When I saw about Ocean Rescue I sort of guessed it wouldn't be popular. I guess at theme parks people expect stuff to be out of the ordinary, so if you are just showing a doco it's not going to hold peoples attention because you can watch stuff like this on TV at home. A shame I guess because they are trying to convey a nice message with this. Personally I would've left the theatre showing planet SOS, but had this doco showing in a smaller theatre connected an animal exhibit, that people could freely leave and enter.

The only ad I have seen belittling Dominos is the one that shows how Dominos are much smaller...And I didn't need an ad to tell me that. In the town I used to live in we had a Pizza Hut, but then a Dominos opened (The first in their Victorian expansion from memory) so we decided to give them ago. After we got them we opened the boxes, and we were like Is that all? How do you get the financial results of a competitors store?...I thought they were private?